Babe Ruth
By: Jack M


What do you think about when the words Babe Ruth come to your mind? Well, what comes to my mind is the fact George Herman Ruth (a.k.a the Sultan of Swat and the Great Bambino) hit 714 career home runs!

Babe Ruth was born on February 2, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was raised in Baltimore as a child. When he was seven years old his parents sent him to St. Mary’s Industrial School because of his horrible behavior inside and outside of school and because his parents worked at a bar and had no time to take care of him. At age eight he was caught stealing things, cutting classes, and worst of all, he was caught chewing tobacco! When Babe was at St. Mary’s Industrial School he practiced playing baseball every day, and when he got out of that school he started playing minor league baseball.

In 1914, George Herman Ruth was moved up to the majors to play for the Boston Red Sox at 20 years old. Babe pitched for the Sox for five years. Then, in 1919, the New York Yankees paid the Red Sox money to get Babe Ruth to play for the Yanks. Boston got more money for that trade but they suffered deeply from it, they didn’t win the World Series until 2004! The Yankees paid him $125,000 to play for them. Babe Ruth pitched four years for the Yanks (1920, 1921, 1930, and 1933). After 15 seasons with New York, Babe got traded to the Boston Braves, and didn’t even play one season with the Braves. Then the Sultan of Swat retired. Babe Ruth was the fifth player ever to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (in 1936).

In all 35 seasons of Babe’s career, he hit 714 home runs, 2,213 runs batted in, and a career batting average of .342. During his career with the Yankees, Babe won four World Series titles. He also won ten home run titles with the Yankees, Red Sox, and the Boston Braves. As a pitcher he had two twenty win seasons, a career earned run average of 2.28, and 89 wins and 46 losses.

All in all Babe Ruth is clearly one of the best players baseball has!
He’s also someone that most of America’s little league players
look up to and idolize.


Works Cited

Kramer, Sydelle. Baseball's Greatest Hitters (Step-Into-Reading, Step 5). New York: Random House Books for Young Readers, 2000.
Krull, Kathleen. Lives of the athletes thrills, spills (and what the neighbors thought). San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1997.
McLeese, Don. Babe Ruth (American Legends Series). Grand Rapids: Rourke, 2002.